Never Again
by oneiromancer242
Summary: Pure angst for a reader prompt. Wanda finds her brother's self-harming difficult to deal with in more than one way. TRIGGER WARNINGS ALL OVER.
1. Chapter 1

**A/N : See this? This is a BRIGHT FLASHING TRIGGER WARNING SIGN. if you are triggered by this, please seek the help you need.**

 **Reader prompt for Inavia who wanted to see how Wanda feels about her brother's self-harming.**

 **1.**

The lava lamp on the table is casting morphing, ghostly patterns over the room, for once all the electronics turned off and quiet, hardly light enough to see by, but she knows her way down here. She can move quietly and quickly without tripping over any of the stuff Peter leaves around, slip to the side of the bed, sit down cautiously. The mattress sinks under her weight, soft and downy, her twin doesn't stir.

She strokes away the fronds of feathery silver falling over his closed eyes with a finger, sees that beneath the papery skin his eyes are flickering rapidly with dreams. Hopes that they are good ones. Knows that they are not. She should have told their mother like she'd threatened to, should have done more than shout and thump him and take the blade out of his hands. Coming on him unawares with his headphones on turned up too loud bent intently over something in his lap, approaching curiously to see what he was doing. He had looked faraway and trancelike, watching intently whilst the blade drew another bright line behind it over the soft, vulnerable skin of his inner wrist. So much blood, pattering over his baggy black jeans that like all his clothes are far too big for him. Running down into the deep hollow in his elbow. Staining the fingertips that hold the blade like the juice of wild berries.

His eyes are wide and frightened when she screams at him, an animal frozen in the headlights of an oncoming truck. He'd thought she had accompanied her mother to the store, thought he was alone in the house. Thought nobody would catch him. He was wrong.

He lied, she knew that. Told her it was the first time when she could see the pinkish-purple of closed wounds under the rivulets of his blood. Sat silent and shaking whilst she fetched the first-aid kit and gently wrapped gauze bandages over the fresh wounds, tight-lipped in her terrified fury. Swore that he never would again and put his bandaged arms around her and sobbed, all gasping tears and snot and remorse, against her hair and begged her not to tell their mother. She had not.

The wounds were like little raw mouths, gaping in his skin and weeping blood, pouring out the turmoil and the pain and the things he couldn't put into comprehensible words, gushing out the demons that haunted him, the things he couldn't tell his mother, his twin sister, himself, that were bigger than himself and needed to be purged from his tiny, frail body before they devoured him. She wants to kiss every tiny screaming mouth on their wet lips and silence them forever, take his pain away and let him get some rest. Wants to hurt him worse than he has hurt himself, feels sick and furious and helpless and so, so sad that there is nothing she can do.

He tries to tell them. Tries to express in words how crazy and tiny and stupid and wretched he feels, but his mouth tries to keep up with his mind and the words tumble over each other, tying his tongue in knots. He cannot make them understand, because they can't hear the individual words when they pour out of him in a whitewater gush of emotional chaos. They try, but they can't, and he cannot slow down for them. They understand that the past two years have been frightening and harrowing for him, that he has been terrified and fighting for his life against an illness nobody could diagnose. He cannot make them understand that now that he is beginning to feel better, to regain his strength and fill out a little, what it has all done to his mind has left him crippled and in psychological agony. They all try, but it can't be done.

She takes her twin on her lap as though he were their baby sister, clutches him to her and rocks him gently. His legs were long and bony, hanging limply off her lap, Converse sneakers dragging on the carpet, she can hear the _shhh shhh shhh_ as his toes move through the pile with the motion of his wracking sobs. Hear his heartbeat, rapid and uneven and desperate, hear his too-fast breath rasping hot and wet and ragged against her neck. His tears are wet on her collar. She hates him so fiercely for doing this, for being unable to confide in her. Loves him just as hard, and wants only to hold him and rock him and let him cry in her hair and pour his agony out in salt-water less precious than his lifeblood. Can feel his guts clenching in spasms of hunger but knows he cannot eat yet, that he is crying too hard and will only vomit anything straight back up. She will make sure he eats later, when he has purged himself of some of this pain. Something sweet and comforting, but not yet. She does not understand why he would do this, why he would hurt himself when there was already so much that hurt. She understands perfectly that he feels he has no other valve to release the pressure.

He cries himself to exhaustion, falling limp and twitching against her body, his breath thick with his tears and barely slowed in unhappy sleep. She sits rocking him whilst darkness falls and she hears her mother return from the store and calls back to her that they were fine and holds her brother and does not feel fine at all. Tucks her hands around the protruding cage of bones in his chest and runs her thumb along the heaving ribs, gently, slowly, soothingly. Wonders if she is soothing him or herself. Lifts the insignificant weight of him and hears her knees crack from long stillness, carries him like a child to his bed, slips off his sneakers and pulls the heavy covers over him. So small, so vulnerable and fragile under her hands. Heart like a trapped bird fluttering against the cage of his ribs, frantically seeking escape, breath hitching in his chest and exhaled still hot and salt. Closed eyes so puffy and raw and painted with purple shadows. He still doesn't sleep enough, though it has gotten better recently. He sleeps a couple of hours a night. Wanda knows he wakes in terror from nightmares more often than not. She rests her hand over the hard peak of his hip, wonders if there would ever come a time when she could not see her brother's bones, when he would not be so ill and frail, when the childlike beauty of his face would not be ruined by the hollowness of his cheeks or the sickly pallor of his skin. When his huge dark eyes would not look wet with tears and alive with a madness he could not live with.

He curls his arms to his face, a little boy in teenager's skin, overlong sleeves pulled tight over his bare-branch fingers, the tips poking out. She sees a little blood she had missed lurking under his nails, feels sad and angry and frightened all over again as she thinks of the bulky blood-soaked bandages under the sleeves. Wants to stop him. Does not want to stop him if this is how he can live. Climbs into the bed with him and pulls the delicate body against her tightly. When their mother came to find her, she would see them there and assume that Peter had not felt well, that Wanda had climbed in to hold him whilst he dealt with the acid-burn pain in his bones he still had from time to time or the churning nausea in his gut, had fallen asleep. She would leave her twins there, not realising the truth. He had been getting better, but things were still tough sometimes.

She wouldn't want to wake her brave children, curled together though both were teenagers now and it was possibly not quite appropriate for them to cuddle up in bed together anymore. Would turn off the lava lamp and leave them in darkness until Peter would stir again. Perhaps stoop to kiss them each on the forehead before she left. Assume that Wanda would have encouraged her brother to eat supper before he slept and leave them.

Wanda will rise only briefly to go to her bedroom, tiptoe past her mother's door. Collect the threadbare stuffed elephant she has slept with every night of her life. Return to the basement and place it carefully in Peter's arms. Settle again beside him.

This was her own form of hurting herself, Wanda thinks. Scoops a hand into the small of her brother's back and pulls him close against her. The dig of his pointed hips is a dull needle against her belly, her fingers running over his vertebrae a reminder of his frailty. Staying here, holding him, keeping his secret and not doing what she knew was right – telling their mother, stopping him – this is her way of causing herself pain. It would leave no scar, there was no blood to clean up, but it was harm nonetheless to stay and to dwell and to feel the agony that radiated out of her poor twin's mind. Wanda isn't psychic, but she has been by her brother's side all his life, and she knows him as nobody would ever know him, can feel when he hurt and when he was confused and frightened. Absorbs that fear and agony and lets it sting her too. It is all she can do for him, to try to share the agony he is in.

She is so afraid for him, for herself. For their family. She has spent months terrified he would die, skipped school for weeks to sit with him in his bed and wrap him in soft blankets and put the television shows he liked on though he was too comatose with weakness and exhaustion to watch them with her. Listened to the NG apparatus a doctor had insisted he use when swallowing became more effort than he could make hissing and clicking through the long silent hours. She had been petrified all that time, heartened when he had begun to improve, clawed himself back from that edge by his fingernails. Now she feared she would lose him another way. That they would take her obviously insane twin away from her and put him in a small room where he couldn't hurt himself. That he wouldn't stop one day when she wasn't there to catch him and would die by his own hand. She feared that was what he wanted, that she was selfish to keep him alive when his life was torment and crazy thoughts he could not catch. She lets herself cry for him, for herself, but only when he cannot see it.

This would be the last time she hurt herself this way, she promised to the half-dark room. Next time, she would tell their mother. Would not dress his wounds but would show them gaping and screaming to the woman who had given her life to them. Would drag and carry him if she had to, and would take that final blow of hurt as he looked at her betrayed and angry. But no more, after that. She wouldn't hurt herself like this any longer.


	2. Chapter 2

**A/N TRIGGER WARNING REMAINS IN FORCE**

2

Wanda had hit her twin brother many times in the past. Clouted him over the head with Tonka trucks when they were little and she wanted the one he had, though he would have given it to her gladly if she'd only asked. Playfully hit him too hard, forgetting his delicacy, when they would bicker as older children. More than once she'd shoved him over by accident, especially in those years when he had been lanky and rawboned and feather-light, meaning only to push him away but forgetting that for now her strength outstripped his. Her temper was fierce and firey, and Peter got the hard end of it fairly often. Laughed and forgiven her once her ire had cooled and let her kiss the accidental bruises better. Siblings squabbled. Twins squabbled harder than any. She had hit him many times, but she had never meant it so much as when she had caught him again.

Not the blade this time. He had sworn he'd never use it again after she had caught him once more and dragged him, gripped by one sticky slippery bloody arm, up to the kitchen. He had sobbed and bled everywhere, pleaded with their mother not to be angry. She had been too upset for that, had crushed him against her and made him an appointment with a child psychiatrist first thing the following morning. He had not been lying then. Wanda and their mother had helped him gather up the dozens of little blades – open razors and disassembled pencil-sharpeners and craft knives and scalpels – that he had secreted all over his room. Seal them all up in a box, tape it up tight. Hand it over to his mother for disposal with a solemn promise that he would stop.

Wanda hadn't believed him. Had regularly grabbed his sweater-swathed arms and pushed his sleeves up to check for new cuts for years after that. He had kept his promise. It had been five years since she'd last felt the need to check. Peter found other outlets for his crazy now – stealing and graffiti and practical jokes and underage drinking and the odd flirtation with drugs and petty crimes that Wanda didn't like, but considered were far better than cutting bloody stripes in his flesh. She moved away to college, and didn't like it when she would return home to find that her twin had gotten himself drunk or high again, but she could deal with that. It didn't hurt him as much as it might have another kid, and though he still ranted and babbled and seemed absolutely out of his own control at times he had seemed to be settling. She could sleep in her dorm room and only occasionally have to call home in the middle of the night to make sure her brother was okay. She could relax a little bit, knowing that Peter was finally able to keep a leash on himself just a little.

Then the track team and the World Records and the reporters and the widespread castigation. She had not been able to stand being away. Instead of taking a summer job she had come home to stay with them, been relieved and happy at first that Peter seemed to be dealing with this in something that approached a normal way. Moping in his room, listening to miserable music – no cuts, that she could see, just a lot of cupcakes and Twinkies and feeling unwell and a couple of days picking at food afterward. She'd been supportive, found it less hard than it had been, not felt so selfish and hurt, been able to reason with him. Felt less crazed herself.

Until she'd caught him at it. Sat rocking a chair back and forth on its rear legs, seemed at first to be tapping his arm in time to music, until she'd realised there was no music playing. That he was not tapping, but banging his bare, thin wrist against the end of the chair arm, those strong runner's legs rocking the chair in time to the banging. That faraway look on his face again, sending her straight back to being fourteen and cleaning up his bloody arms and holding him whilst he sobbed.

Overpowering anger then, mastering her and driving her forward to slap him so hard across the face that he had tipped back in the chair, shaken out of stupor, overturned and crashing to the carpet in an undignified heap. Not standing when he came to rest on his knees, but clutching one hand to the hot, stinging red mark her palm had branded across his cheek. Her fury would not cool, would not leave her be, red flashes flaring from her eyes as she had struck him again and again, open-handed slaps that caught him around the head and shoulders, hands coming up to protect himself. Still angry when he had rolled into a ball on the floor, whined and cried and not spoken. Not that she would have heard him over her shouting. How could he do this again? How could he betray her trust this way? How could he turn to this when she and Lorna and her mother were all there gathered around him, ready to support him? Why could he not drown them in words as he had once done, and instead sit here and lock them away inside him and let them flow out through vicious contusions on his wrists? No fear for him in that moment but furious hatred for his actions, crackling scarlet energy blowing all the bulbs in his room and leaving them in darkness barely punctured by the light from the one low slit window. Stamping away to her own room to leave him there rocking in a foetal position.

Her wrists hurt, afterward, from the force of her blows. Pain shooting up her arms as she gripped her stuffed elephant tightly, scratched a new hole that spurted fluff and dust. Fear had crept back in slow and cold as approaching winter, ran its fingers up her spine and made her shudder on her bed. Stung at the salty trails on her face and breathed on her neck. Something old and frozen and coiled in the back-brain that stretched and woke inside her. A sinking, draining feeling in the pit of her stomach, her anger leaving her empty and ready to be consumed by terror.

He had picked himself up by the time she rose and crept downstairs to him. Curled up on the sofa, staring at the nothing he could see through those wounded, hurting eyes. She had held him then, too big for her lap at 21, stronger and heavier and covered with enough lean muscle that his ribs had not felt so sharp against her hands. Again he had promised her never again, again he had begged her not to tell their mother, again he had sworn he would pull himself out of this.

Wanda trusted her twin with her life and her heart. Trusted him to do anything for her, should she ever need it. But she could not trust him with himself. Anger and distrust and terror drove bile into her throat, the long-gone fear of loss gripping her again.


	3. Chapter 3

**A/N : Final part, perhaps a little less trigger.**

 **Thanks again to Inavia for requesting this :-) xx**

3

They had been forty, when she had finally had the courage to ask again. Woozy from wine, a pleasant ache in her jaw from laughter. Some part of her was light and gay and dancing along on fumes of alcohol and the happiness of spending time with some of the people she loved most – her sister, her twin, his wife – and doing nothing but celebrating their lives together. Another part could not dance. There was a heaviness in her heart when she had decided to check on her brother, who had gone for a breath of fresh air on the patio outside.

A high full moon did its best to lend the scene a ghostly glow, the lapping of the Hudson in the near distance rhythmic and peaceful. The hotter glow of a burning cigarette leading her to a lawn chair. He too, was illuminated and glowing in the moonlight, gleaming off his satin-soft hair and setting sparks dancing in the depths of his eyes, catching at his dimples when he smiled up at her.

"I thought you gave up" she'd said quietly, swayed across to kneel beside his chair, lean on the armrest. He smiled again, cheeky now – the smile she had got used to and loved more than any other.

"Not when I'm drunk," he'd said. The hand that was not holding the cigarette fell to caress an errant strand of red that had escaped from her updo. Turning slightly white now, just that one fallen strand, "Which I rarely am, so I'm not bothered"

She laughed drunkenly, softly. Peter had kept a battered half-empty carton of cigarettes in the inside pocket of his jacket for as long as she could remember, but he'd never really taken up smoking fully. He just liked to know they were there for when he really felt he could do with it. It had never harmed him, and Wanda didn't care. It was in many ways a life-affirming habit for him, a reassurance that he was still breathing despite the feeling that his whirlwind emotions were suffocating him. The odd sneaky smoke had been a part of him for almost twenty years, something even his wife hadn't known until tonight.

She remembered when he'd taken it up. It was something to do with his hands other than bang his wrists against things, dig a blade into his skin. An acceptable way to hurt himself that hadn't really left any damage behind. Two or three a day at most, none by the time he'd turned 25, but the pack was there anyway, just in case. Now just the occasional one when he'd had too much to drink.

"Are you okay?" she asked, squinted up at him, taking one last drag before he crushed the butt out, "Really, I mean?"

He'd thought a while before he answered, stared into the tree-lined gardens, contemplated the moon on the pines and the silver glimmer it cast. Looked deep into the darkness and finally, reached for her hand and smiled again. A full, gentle, lovely smile.

"I'm okay" he told her, squeezed her fingers tight. His hands were cold, but soft and loving, "I promise"

He rose and offered her his hand to get to her feet. Led her gently not straight back to the hotel, but down a path that looped around the grounds, skirting the forest the bounded them in. She slipped under his arm, enjoyed the weight of it around her shoulders, the hard, rounded bulge of his bicep resting against her neck. Wound an arm around his narrow back and rested her hand on his hip, felt the powerful muscle there stretch and contract with each stride. Loved the health and strength she could feel against her, heart swelling with gratitude for it. The pines smelled sharp and delicious, the smell of petrichor leaching from the rich earth and mingling with the familiar violet smell of his shampoo, the bourbon on his breath.

"You're drunk, _Vanda_ ," he chuckled as she stumbled around a corner, steadied herself with a hand pressed to his firm, muscular belly, "Careful now"

"Always," she told him, squeezed him tight. Bit her underlip and didn't meet his eyes for a while, "I'm sorry"

"For what?"

"For not knowing what to do," she sighed, "When we were young. For not being able to cope"

He had stopped under the shade of a pine, the little moonlight filtering through painting camouflage shadows on their faces, turning them both into midnight tigers. Rested his hands on her shoulders, turned her to face him and bring her eyes up to his, felt her hands slip to sit lightly on his waist. No woman but his wife and sisters could touch him this way and not make him slip from their grasp immediately, love and warmth spreading from her fingertips to fill his body. Looking down at her, eyes huge and black in the night

"You coped the only way you could" he told her earnestly, "And I'm grateful for everything. All the punches, all the shouting, all the pushing and tantrums. Every bit of it did me good, my darling, wonderful sister."

"You've stopped, haven't you?" she asked. Her lips were wet, her eyes shining and on the verge of spilling messy alcohol-fueled tears down her cheeks, "Hurting yourself?"

"I stopped the day you told me to" he said. She could tell it was the truth. Nodded, swallowed, asked in return

"Why?"

One hand reached to brush that errant strand away, before he had pulled her close to his chest and she felt the pads of his fingers stroke firmly against her skull, his heart loud and strong and quick against her face.

"Because I couldn't hurt you any more" he whispered, "And _I'm_ sorry. For everything"

There was no more to be said. They walked, arms tight around one another, until the lights of the hotel had shone out of the darkness, the happy laughter inside beckoning them on. She let him go first, back to the arms of the woman who adored him and the sister who would always look up to him. Wanda breathed the pine-earth-night smell deeply and closed her eyes, let the anger and fear she had felt for all that time seep away from her and into the roots of the trees. Let it turn to sap and life and moonlight and emptied herself of concern at last. Smiled once more and returned to the small gathering, glad that she could finally trust her twin with his own life.


End file.
